It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

In doubtful cases the more liberal interpretation must always be preferred.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he’s going to get sick on it.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Seeing is not always believing.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect – in terror.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.